Read Online Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 by Bad for Business - Free Book Online Page B

entirely new tone, “that’s different. I knew you don’t like anyone getting under your feet on a murder case, and I had decided not to annoy you on this one, thinking Nat Collins was all and more than Miss Duncan would need to make it as little unpleasant as possible. I had supposed that she had walked in there at a bad moment, and the murderer had conked her merely to get away. But now—”
    “Now?” Damon prompted.
    “I’m afraid I’m going to be a nuisance after all. Of all the snide tricks.” Fox abruptly rose to his feet. “Are you through with me?”
    “About. For the present. I wanted to ask if you have anything to add to this statement. Anything at all.”
    “No. You think I know something, but you’re wrong.”
    “Why do you say I think you know something?”
    “Because you told me about those prints, thinking you might open a seam. But you’re wrong. I’m starting from scratch. With your squad working on it already twelve hours, you know a devil of a lot more than I do. One of the things you know, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d tell me. Were Miss Duncan’s prints on the two-pound weight?”
    “No. Why should they be?”
    “Because Tingley had been struck with it on the back of his skull.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Because I felt the place. The body was the only thing I touched. He was struck harder and in a more vulnerable spot than Miss Duncan, and I think there was a fracture. I doubt if I’m being helpful, but I’ll finish. He was unconscious from the blow when his throat was cut. It would be next to impossible to slit a man’s throat with a single clean deep stroke like that when he was on his feet and had his faculties. So—if you’re nursing the fantasy that Miss Duncan did it—first she used the two-pound weight on him, and then the knife, and then she bopped herself on the side of the head with the weight. When she came to, she carefully wiped the weight clean but ignored the handle of the knife—”
    The door opened to admit a uniformed policeman, who spoke to the inspector’s inquiring eye:
    “Phillip Tingley is here, sir.”
    “All right, one second.” Damon regarded Fox gloomily. “You say you’re going to be a nuisance. You know the rules, and you know you were out of boundslast night. I’m not forgetting that. You say you touched nothing in that room, but you went there alone before notifying us, and someone searched the place for something. You? I don’t know. Did Miss Duncan send you there for something and you got it? I don’t know. Did you learn something that you’re not telling about that quinine business when you were there yesterday? I don’t know. Where do I find you when I want you?”
    “Home or Nat Collins’s office.” Fox added, turning to go, “Good luck, Inspector,” and tramped out.
    In an outer room where people were seated on a row of chairs against the wall, he stopped to tie a shoestring, and saw, from the corner of his eye, the policeman who had followed him out beckon to a bony-faced young man with brooding deep-set eyes. Having thus caught a glimpse of Philip Tingley for possible future needs, he proceeded to the corridor and the elevators.
    On the second floor of the Tingley building on 26th Street, Sol Fry and G. Yates sat at a little table in the sauce room making a desultory lunch of Spiced Anchovies Number 34, potato chips, lettuce with dressing, and milk. They had done that for over thirty years, and Arthur Tingley had often eaten with them, as had his father before him.
    “I don’t think so,” Sol Fry rumbled aggressively. “It’s a black mystery and that’s not at the bottom of it.”
    “You’re wrong as usual,” declared Miss Yates, with an equal aggressiveness in her unexpected soprano. “T. T. has had its ups and downs, like any other business, but there has never been anything disastrous,no real catastrophe, until this abominable quinine thing. And you’ll find this was part of it. It ended in